Personality and identity from the perspective of systemic science

Abstract

The investigation of personality based on systemic science can’t be done without a perspective on dyna­mic processes. This approach allows for the identification of cognitive and emotional patterns and the analysis of their stability or instability. The theoretical construct of personality can be explained by the individual constellation of more or less stable attractors (cognitive and emotional patterns) in a multidi­mensional space of observables representing the behaviour, the emotions, and the cognitions of a certain person. The representation of dynamic patterns by potential landscapes contains the equivalent information. A qualitative approach called configuration analysis identifies temporally limited attractors of mental func­tioning - or the valleys of a potential landscape, what is equivalent - as States of Mind. A short case study illustrates that psychotherapy can be described by changing constellations of States of Mind.  The development of the personal identity of a human being – the “self” – is based on the meta-representati­on of the personal potential landscape of cognitive-emotional patterns. Our brain is constructing the feeling of personal identity by a continuous and active process. By this it guarantees the subject’s coherence and capacity to perform. All types of mental pattern formation as well as the representation of the self are based on processes of neural self-organization which continuously takes place in the nonlinear complex system called brain.